The Royal Mail stamps featuring all six published Jane Austen novels will go on sale from today. Photograph: Royal Mail/PA

A set of stamps featuring illustrations of Jane Austen novels goes on sale today, including newly-commissioned artwork depicting scenes from her books.

All six published novels are included in the new stamps, which are being issued to mark the 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice.

The Royal Mail also announced that letters posted in Chawton in Hampshire, where Austen spent her last years, and Steventon, near Basingstoke, where she was born, will have a special postmark for a week, featuring the Pride and Prejudice quote "Do anything rather than marry without affection".

Two first-class stamps will have illustrations from Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, with images from Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion making up the six-stamp set. Royal Mail commissioned the artwork by Angela Barrett.

Royal Mail stamps spokesman Andrew Hammond said: "When you think of great British authors, Jane Austen inevitably comes to mind. Her novels have contributed immeasurably to British culture over the last two centuries."

Many events have been planned this year to celebrate the bicentenary of the author's best loved novel. Published in 1813, Pride and Prejudice was Austen's second novel and she described it as her "own darling child".